As the Guardian noted yesterday afternoon:
A Conservative MP and former minister is listed in shareholder registers as personally owning stakes in companies worth nearly £500,000, raising questions about the effectiveness of the controversial parliamentary “blind trust” system used to buy the shares.
Jonathan Djanogly, the MP for Huntingdon, holds shares in Lloyds Bank worth more than £180,000, has an investment worth £120,000 in the housebuilding company Persimmon and a stake worth almost £80,000 in Sainsbury's. He has smaller stakes in six other companies including the energy supplier Centrica.
The investments have come to light as part of a Guardian investigation into what are in effect secret shareholdings of MPs.
I contributed to this story, as I have to previous stories on the issue of blind trusts. The Guardian noted this:
There are no specific parliamentary or ministerial rules governing how a blind trust is set up and how one should be managed. The lack of clear guidelines means it is left to individual interpretation. Transparency campaigners have pointed out that a key flaw with blind trusts is that the beneficiaries have a degree of awareness about the assets that are in the trusts. At the very least they will be aware of what has gone into the trust at its creation.
When an MP or minister holds shares in a blind trust, they do not need to publicly disclose their existence, even if they are over the £70,000 threshold after which an MP is normally obliged to register them. Campaigners say this creates a transparency black hole.
They added:
Richard Murphy, a professor of accounting practice at Sheffield University management school, told the Guardian: “The difficulties with the blind trust is it isn't publicly registered. We don't know who created it, who the trustee is, how the accountability works.
“To exist as a blind trust we have to know it is properly functioning with appropriate Chinese walls between the beneficiary/settlor and the manager … But without that full disclosure of who is doing what, for who, how and when, we can't be sure the blind trust is effective. Knowing these things is critical if blind trusts are to continue to be a part of our political system.”
One day politicians will learn how to get their House in order, but not yet it seems.
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I don’t believe politicians will ever have to get their house in order as long as FPTP still exists.
My rationale: a party with 100+ serving mps – be that in government or opposition – can ‘get rid of’ a few naughty individuals without affecting their parliamentary position.
With a coalition government – as I’ve observed over the 30 years I’ve lived on the continent – such ‘naughty individuals’ tarnish the reputation of the coalition party exponentially, allowing coalition partners who may be at odds with another partner to bring down a government and force new elections, using the ‘naughty individuals’ as scapegoats for losing trust in the party as a whole.
A huge price to pay, especially in junior coalition parties, meaning they tend to vet their members more strongly and are far more aware of maintaing coalition/parliamentary standards.
The tories and Labour don’t seem to place so much importance on standards in public life.
I’m no longer convinced that getting rid of FPTP is the panacea that those who want better financial and social balance in the UK believe it to be. I think this is because all the political parties in the UK clearly don’t understand how money works as a system. They are a million miles away from understanding! I also think there’s an obsequiousness to the market by them that isn’t justified in that market fundamentalists are actually destroying the economy. This can be seen in the way the Tories have been underfunding vital public good and services that actually support the market. There is a clear cut case I believe for a new political party in the UK which understands what I’ve just stated and also see that tackling climate change is top of an agenda led by the state.
Theresa May was another of those mentioned with large shareholdings in an article in the Guardian on 9th July. In her case it was with BP. She had discussions with BT bosses knowing all the while that her husband held shares in BT. He also has shares in Centrica, like Djanogly.
May was shown in all the news programmes yesterday talking about the Illegal Immigration Bill as if she was on the side of labour, yet she never once voted against the government.
Should Djanogly be a member of the public accounts committee with all those shares in Centrica, etc?
In the 1990s I remember getting into a detailed discussion with a group of us who were having to take yet another financial services examination and the subject of offshore discretionary trusts and blind trusts arose.
The conclusion we reached was that loopholes were left in the legislation and structure to enable those in positions of power to maintain their chosen balance of asset control without the obligation to declare the asset. I passed the exam!
We have dozens of MPs who are “funded” by private healthcare companies too. How can the MPs possibly claim to be unbiased?
Source: This is how much Labour and Tory MPs get from private health firms, The National, 5th June 2023
https://www.thenational.scot/news/uk-news/23568478.much-labour-tory-mps-get-private-health-firms/
Keir Starmer is on the list. Surprise surprise, “The last Labour Government reduced waiting times by using the private sector, increasing staff
numbers and spreading good practice. We did this before. We will do it again.”, BUILD AN NHS FIT FOR THE FUTURE, Labour, https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Mission-Public-Services.pdf
Read: How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps by Dr Youssef El-Gingihy
https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-Easy-Steps-second/dp/1789041783/
Watch: The Great NHS Heist https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thegreatnhsheist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro-oU0us